Japan's military should help U.S. carry security load: Editorial

An imagine released last month by North Korea, as its leader threatened to attack the United States.North Korean Central News Agency

Since its surrender 68 years ago, Japan has lived in peace and prosperity, never lifting a finger to threaten its neighbors.

So perhaps it’s time to relax and welcome the news that Japan is increasing its small military budget, and moving to amend the constitutional provisions that strictly limit its military to territorial defense.

After World War II, it made strategic sense for the United States to bear the burden of defending Western Europe and Japan. We accounted for half of the world’s economic output, and our allies were impoverished.

That’s no longer the case. We now make up about one-quarter of the global economy and our allies have grown wealthy. It’s past time they took on more of the burden.

Under Japan’s stringent military restrictions, inserted into its constitution at the direction of the United States, its military cannot do a thing to help in any collective defense. Suppose, for example, that North Korea were to develop the capacity to fire long-range missiles at the United States. Japan could not legally fire one of its own interceptor missiles to help stop it.

In Japan, attitudes are changing as North Korea has become more hostile and unstable, and as China has more aggressively asserted its claim of sovereignty over islands in the East China Sea that Japan considers its own. For the first time in a decade, the government is slightly increasing defense spending. Shinzo Abe, the new conservative prime minister, is pressing to remove the constitutional restrictions on use of the military altogether.

There are dangers to this approach that must be handled carefully. China has been increasing its military spending by double digits every year, and conducting amphibious assault exercises in an attempt to intimidate Japan over the disputed islands. The military answer needs to be strong enough to deter the Chinese, but not so strong that it provokes them into escalating an arms race in the region that will help no one.

The main point, though, is that both Japan and Europe need to pitch in more toward their own defense so that the United States can safely reduce its own oversized military footprint in the world.

We are spending more on defense today than we did at the height of the Cold War, after adjusting for inflation. America’s defense budget is larger than the next 13 defense budgets combined, and most of them are our friends or allies.

That’s not sustainable at a time when our infrastructure is crumbling, our debt is growing, and we’re cutting spending on research and college scholarships. If we are going to strike a deal to contain the national debt, the defense budget is a rich target.